For the multifaceted visual artist Julius Margulies, aka Angry, nothing is off limits when it comes to creating intentional art that has an emotional purpose. In recent years, Snuffy has become a massive figure in tattoo culture, due in large part to his distinctive and imaginative surreal style, along with the emotional connections and bonds he forms with his clients. For each tattoo What Snuffy does, he requests a personalized story from his clients beforehand as a means of inserting as much emotional depth and meaning into the art while providing a thoughtful, cathartic experience for his theme to continue. It’s no surprise that Snuffy’s books are tightly closed for the next two years, as his unique tattoo expertise has been in high demand. Not to mention, he has also become a favorite tattooist for major celebrities, including Kelly machine gun Y pete davidsonAmong many others.

While Snuffy is undoubtedly reaching a great professional level and seems to be in touch with his emotions and communication skills with others, he is human just like the rest of us. After observing the modern, hyper-technological world we now live in, Snuffy admitted that he felt a sense of exhaustion due to the addictive and isolating nature of social media and how it can affect his sense of purpose and community, and leave him unproductively overstimulated. . . With no shortage of creative ideas, Snuffy began developing the new Web3 project titled Looking In: To Know Yourself, an interactive and collaborative mental health platform that aims to use technology and social networks in a healthy, sustainable and emotionally enriching way.

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With Looking In, users will first be asked to answer a large number of written and multiple-choice questions from real clinical psychological studies to help them in their process of discovering who they really are. From there, participants will be matched with their distinctive personality trait and a handful of personality facets that define their true self. Through this process, participants will link up with other like-minded people to form their own “tribe” and collaborate in thought-provoking exercises, as well as form links and communities through third-party applications such as Discord. Each entrant will get a unique piece of identification in the form of a tarot card-style Venn Diagram piece of art that has been hand-designed by Snuffy and can, in turn, be minted on the blockchain.

Looking within: knowing yourself is a testament to the power of using technology for good and highlights the importance of self-discovery and human connection in a world that hasn’t necessarily had those ideas at the forefront of society as a whole. Snuffy told us about the creation of the project.

What was it about your addiction to social media and technology that made you realize that you needed to make healthy changes both in your personal life and in society at large?

Where I found social media giving me difficulties was my unpreparedness to see how good everyone’s lives are at all times when everything is filtered to show only the good stuff. Whoever is built for it supports them, but I don’t. The other part is that when I found success in my career, I became very accessible to people and how they thought they could approach me. I have this problem where I please people and I don’t want to let anyone down, so I feel compelled to always respond to people. [in my DMs] — this is a burden on me because it’s social etiquette to respond.

However, as an artist, without social media as a tool, I would not have risen as quickly in my career. For that, I owe her a great debt, but with the way these companies work, they are training us to consume too quickly. Leonardo Da Vinci painted 18 paintings in his lifetime, but if you don’t upload 18 posts a week today, you’re screwed. What is a true artist who puts integrity and conviction into his work supposed to do besides scream into the abyss?

How did you start creating Looking In: To Know Yourself? Did you get help from mental health professionals, as well as experts in technology and Web3 spaces?

When I set out to tattoo people, I ask them to write me a story beforehand, whether it’s a celebrity, a civilian, or anyone in between. You’re giving me a part of you because I’m giving you a part of me, and at that point, it’s not so much about getting paid as it is about telling a story and sharing it with someone for the rest of their life. it lives. When people come to me for a tattoo, they end up seeing the tattoo as a form of therapy. When I really sat down and analyzed my practice and took a step back, my only value is not actually the tattoo. It is the client’s own self-discovery. The tattoo is just the reception of a cathartic experience.

I have a two year waiting list for my tattoos so I wanted to find a way to recreate this experience, therapy and catharsis for as many people as possible; all this led me to create looking in. Personally, I’ve spent the past year analyzing facets of personality, creating art, and visually interpreting them in my own style.

What was the process of categorizing different personality traits and then matching users according to the “Tribal” concept that you have since developed with this platform?

The clinical breakdown of this project is based on the Big Five personality traits with the OCEAN acronym: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Within each of those domains, there are six facets, so in total there are 30 facets. What we’ve done is give people a result for their input in the five facets that they’re most inclined toward.

We created a feature for you to find out who you think you are and see yourself, and then you can invite your inner circle to take a test on you to see how others perceive you. I feel like there has to be something appealing, and we need the fabric of communication, community and just being heard. [Eventually]you find out who you are and you get this unique art result related to who you are; You can also connect with your inner circle and these domains of people you can connect with on Discord.

Speaking of creating unique art, what does it take to create these distinct pieces?

First, I’ll study one facet of a character trait or domain, and then, much like designing a tattoo, I’ll sit with what I’ve read and then focus on a specific part. From there, I collage my art and make it a blueprint in Photoshop, and once I have that blueprint, I draw it, scan it, and separate it into layers. In my fine art practice, it’s the same. as there are 30 [total] facets, I was not going to leave my artistic mark until a [computer] generative project. You have to strike a balance between the two where I can still have my DNA on a project that is still generative. For me, phase one of this project would have felt inauthentic to do. [computer generated]. All my artwork is intentional, there are 30 facets and 30 artworks. What becomes unique is your five art combinations. All art is how I want it to be, there are no discrepancies.